“Not sure how y’all do it in Broke Assville, California,” she says and drums her fingers impatiently on a newel post, “but here we sleep in actual beds, not leaning against walls. So haul ass up here and make yours.”
I trudge up the creaky wooden stairs, worn in their centers by decades of dead girls coming and going. Most of the bedroom doors, which are nine feet tall, intricately molded, and heavy-looking, are closed, but some are ajar just enough that I can hear a girl practicing the violin down by the second-floor bathroom and another girl reciting Shakespeare just across the way. I round the top of the stairs and glance away from Harper, who’s tapping her foot like I couldn’t be more irritating if I tried, to see steam flooding out of the bathroom. It’s Sunday night. Back to school tomorrow. Since the last time I sat in a Cania classroom, everything has changed, yet nothing is different.
“Don’t look so excited. This isn’t the beginning of a lifelong friendship, Murdering Merchant,” Harper says. She points to the door behind her. “We’re in here.”
She saunters into our room ahead of me. I step warily through the open doorway as she grabs a hairbrush from a dresser, flops back on her fluffy duvet, brushes the ends of her red hair, and watches me like I’m some sort of half-trained monkey.
The room is just as I’d expect the room of a privileged daddy’s girl to be, or at least her side of it is; it’s the antithesis of my bedroom growing up, which I frankly loved but which was so far removed from this, it could have been a different species. Divided into two sides that are mirror images, though Harper’s side has started creeping into mine, our room is all cream, purple, and sparkling glass. Two chandeliers hang from the coffered ceiling, shedding glimmers of light across the large lavender area rug in the center of the hardwood floor. Harper’s side is closest to the door. Her four-poster bed, puffy with more pillows than we had in our entire house back home, is against the violet-and-cream striped wall in which her closet, packed so full the doors can’t close, is set. Next to her bed are a desk and chair, both of which are in front of a dormer window. On the wall with our door, a marble fireplace sits unlit in the corner near my bed, beside two antique-looking dressers.
“I had it done exactly like my bedroom at home,” she says as she runs the brush through the ends of her hair. A Hermès scarf is draped over her nightstand lamp. Gold-framed affirmations and vision boards make a neat row on her side of the room. I can see from the doorway that she’s filled not only her closet with Tory Burch and Chanel’s latest but half of my closet, too.
I feel her gaze zero in on me as I step into my barren new space. My attic bedroom at Gigi’s was too narrow and slanty to be anything more than the Before shot in a home reno magazine, but at least it was wholly mine. No roommate. Now, on closer inspection, I see that my bed, which has been stripped bare, is paint-chipped; the wall it’s pushed against is stabbed with nail holes and bruised by bare patches left behind by hastily pulled tape. A low stack of pale painting canvases are on my mattress, as are two boxes of my stuff and the flat pillow, thin sheets, and patchwork quilt I used at Gigi’s. The desk under my dormer window is beat up. I look closer: someone’s etched Murdering Merchant into the desktop. Gee, I wonder who could have done that?
“Don’t unpack,” Harper says. “If I have my way, you’ll be back in California before the week’s up.”
“One can hope.” I move the boxes to the floor. “Who used to live here?”
Harper groans. Because evidently the sound of my voice puts her over the edge. I look over my shoulder and wait for her to reply, which, with a huge eye roll, she finally does.
“Tallulah Josey.”
“Your friend?”
She arches an eyebrow. “Tallulah thought she was slyer than a cat in a fish factory. When the teachers were all up in arms today, she took it upon herself to sneak into the front office and call her old boyfriend, who wasn’t even that good-looking. Anyway, she got expelled this afternoon.”
I stop unpacking.
“Who caught her making the call?” I ask.
She keeps brushing her hair.
“Who turned her in?”
She clears her throat.
“You know that expulsion means death, right? Harper?”
She flings her brush down at her duvet and scowls at me. But she doesn’t say anything.
“I see,” I say and start making my bed. “But I’m the murderer.”
“I guess we’ll both be sleeping with one eye open.”
AFTER BARELY SURVIVING the onslaught of glares and whispers in the bathroom Monday morning, I leave the dorm to find Ben leaning against a tree. He’s wearing his cardigan because his blazer’s up in my room. He looks at me and smiles apprehensively. And I forget why I was angry with him last night.
Then I remember.
And now I have to decide if I want to stay mad at him to prove some sort of point or let it go so I can feel what it’s like to hold his hand as I walk to my first-period workshop. Which is instructed by Garnet. Which makes me think he probably shouldn’t show up there with me. Which means it’s pointless to hold hands because it’s only a thirty-second walk to the Rex Paimonde building.
“Still mad?” he asks.
I shrug. I’m undecided.
Out of nowhere, Pilot comes flying at us. It looks like he’s going to crash right through us, but he stops short, grinning in his nasty way. Ben and I grab hands on instinct; I hadn’t realized we had an instinctive need to connect. Decision made: I’m not mad at him.
“Bonnie and Clyde,” Pilot says to us. “What’s it like to look the guy you killed in the face?”
“Kinda like I imagine Superman feels when he destroys a villain,” I reply.
Ben tugs my hand. “Come on, Anne. He’s never been worth it.”
As we’re walking away, Pilot grabs my arm.
“Not so fast,” he says. “Voletto wants to see you in his office.”
“And he sent you to tell me?” I shrug free. “Doubtful.”
“I’m your Guardian. So yeah. He wanted you there ten minutes ago.”
“Fine. I’ll be right there.”
“I’m not leaving without you. Come on.”
I glare at him. “Could you give me a second with Ben?”
“Oh, right, Clyde needs to kiss Bonnie good-bye.” He gives Ben the finger but takes a few steps away.
“What would the headmaster want with you?” Ben asks me.
“Who cares? Listen, Ben, I hope you gave some thought to this Garnet situation.”
“I did.”
“Tell me good news.”
He kisses me and smiles. “Great news: I’m sticking with you. I told her last night.”
Crestfallen, I watch Ben as he tells me not to worry and struts happily away. I turn to follow Pilot to Goethe Hall, where we sit and wait outside Dia’s office. I try to clear my head of the frustration of knowing Ben’s giving up a future with me in exchange for the present; I stare blankly ahead as the janitor, Lou Knows, scrapes black letters spelling HEADMASTER VILLICUS off the cloudy window of the door. When he notices Pilot and me, he scowls at Pilot and hands him a stencil pack, black paint, and a thin brush.
“You’re my assistant,” Lou says, and starts away. “Not the other way ’round.”